When it comes to marketing ideas for property management business, the landscape has changed so much in the past few years. Digital marketing has phased out old practices and brought dynamic, exciting tools along with unique challenges.
Effective Property management marketing will leverage those digital tools, while not losing the human touch that makes resident experience and engagement so effective.
A property management marketing plan should include digital strategies, multiple channels, and goals for increasing your number of doors. Here we dive into the process of constructing a good marketing strategy for your property management company with 10 of the top marketing ideas for property management.
We’re joined by Rodney Hays of Geekly Media (formerly RentBridge), who has spent a lot of time conducting marketing specifically for property managers, as well as Second Nature marketing professionals Carol Housel and Brandy Hammond.
We have 10 property management marketing ideas that leaders in the industry recommend for growing your PMC. They're cost-effective and shown to have high return on investment.
A big part of digital marketing for property management is content marketing, which is defined as media creation (videos, articles, social media) designed to inform rather than to persuade.
A good content marketing strategy gives you access to potential clients in the places they are asking questions. This includes places like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google, where investors and potential investors consume real estate investment content that you can provide.
The goal of content marketing is to grow your target audience and give them useful information that both adds value to their business and establishes your company as a subject-matter expert.
So, what kind of content is useful in property management marketing? Here’s what Rodney Hays has to say:
“[Real estate investors] are going to ask questions about lease agreements and tenant screening. They’re going to ask questions about evictions, emotional support animals, those types of questions are always going to come up.”
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing a website to send signals to search engines and their users to gain organic visibility. It helps extend your online presence.
Search engines, mainly Google, are the number one place where people begin their search for information. Content hosted on your website that addresses the most common questions your target audience is asking can position you well on the search engine results page (SERP), leading to increased website traffic.
So how do you find out what topics to build content around?
SEO programs, such as Semrush and Ahrefs, have an incredible database of keywords and common search terms, along with insights for those terms such as how much competition exists in the rankings, how much search volume there is, and how often searches result in a click.
You can also use the “people also ask” tab in the actual SERP to see what common questions are being asked. Then it’s just a matter of addressing the questions in a useful way to start increasing traffic to your website.
A big part of SEO is identifying what your potential new clients are interested in. A good content marketing plan follows that up with useful content that addresses the questions and leverages the specific keywords associated with them. Useful is the keyword here. Google is smart, and the analysis it conducts on webpages is extensive, so it will know if you’re just writing some slop and jamming keywords into it.
Okay, so now you’ve developed content that meets SEO requirements and hits on topics that bring value to your potential customer. What’s next?
Now you need to build a high-quality content distribution strategy. In others words, figure out how to get your messaging in front of your target audience.
A distribution strategy involves assessing where your primary audience is on a daily basis. You can likely reach them on social media platforms, email, direct mail, podcasts, regional conferences, local listings, and more.
Identify what pieces of content best match each platform. For example, a longer form piece should be linked via social media with a catchy blurb or infographics to hook your readers. You can plan regular newsletters or other email campaigns or FAQs to leverage content, as well.
A few of the best ideas for distributing your content:
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience, drive new leads, and nurture existing ones. You can use email marketing tactics to increase sales and your bottom line.
But it’s not always easy to nail email marketing on the target. According to MailChimp, the average open rate for property management emails is just under 20% and the click-through rate is less than 2%. Not great, we know.
That’s why building the right email list can make all the difference. Creating a targeted email list requires a good amount of research, knowledge of your target market, and email marketing tools to help you get there. Digital marketing products like Hubspot, ZoomInfo, and Klaviyo can help you get there.
Of course, digital isn’t everything – in-person events and community-building strategies work, especially in something as hands-on as property management.
If you have the resources, hosting events can boost your brand awareness and company reputation in your area. Because property management is so regional – and creating a niche in the market is key to success – these highly targeted events work exceptionally well in the property management industry. A referral program is a great way to go about this, as long as its within legal regulations.
Paid marketing efforts for property managers are more about visibility and awareness. They’re high-funnel and useful if you have a budget for them.
Hays notes that Geekly clients opt for Facebook, LinkedIn, and sometimes Twitter as targeted social channels. Facebook and LinkedIn have far and away the most active property management discussions and, in addition to paid search, are where you can see the most value for your investment.
When it comes to old- school paid marketing efforts, Facebook ads are among the best ways to advertise property management services. Ads on Facebook are pretty easy to run and include useful features for property managers such as geotargeting.
“Facebook ads are a great gateway into paid ads, since Google ads typically require a much higher budget to get similar performance. Facebook in the past has had a lower cost per click, so you’re getting higher performance from it for less lift and less spend, which is why I recommend it as a really good starting point,” says Brandy Hammond, B2B Marketing Specialist at Second Nature.
Certain ad platforms, including Facebook, also offer geotargeting and audience mirroring, which are useful to property managers who need to target specific audiences in specific regional areas.
“One thing I do love about Facebook ads, like with any other kind of paid ads, is that you can geotarget. Especially with property management and real estate, it makes sense that you’re going to target a specific area because, depending on the scale of your PMC, you probably don’t have national properties,” continued Hammond.
Your social media strategy should include connecting with and tagging important accounts in your area and industry, and building cross-links and cross-posts with other accounts that might have an audience with your target market.
For every piece of content or event you plan, you need to map out how you will share it on social media.
Rodney Hays of Geekly has opened a lot of industry news pages for clients and recommends sharing them across social channels whenever they’re updated.
“Our customers will put their industry news page out there; they'll pull in like 15 or 16 new articles every month. And then, out of those 15 or 16, we will take eight of those and put a third-party link in it and send those out on social media as well. And I think that's done pretty well in bringing in some different traffic that you know, it's just another resource for the people that might be visiting your page,” says Hays.
Your online reputation is made up of all the touchpoints anyone could have with your brand online. This includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Google Reviews, Yelp, and more.
One of the biggest threats to online reputation is reviews. Your marketing plan should include regular maintenance and attention to your online reviews. How are people talking about you online in your comments section, Google Reviews, and Yelp Reviews?
If you see any negative comments that have constructive feedback, make sure you reach out to the person and find out how you can improve or make it right. Respond to the review or comment publicly with a polite and professional tone.
You can’t make everyone happy, but the way you deal with negative feedback goes a long way to protecting your online reputation.
Many property managers maintain a constant stream of content through a website blog.
Real-Time Leasing’s website has extensive content written by their CEO, Deb Newell, who is also a property management consultant. Others communicate useful content with podcasts, such as AHI Properties and Evernest (link to Andrew’s episode), both of which appeared on the Triple Win Property Management podcast.
“Good content seizes opportunities you’ve identified through SEO or other forms of communications and delivers actual value to the readers. A holistic strategy covers both of those parts, and you’ll fail to realize the potential of your marketing efforts if you skip one of them,” says Second Nature Marketing Services Manager Carol Housel.
A popular content curation strategy used by Geekly Media is the industry news page, an example of which can be found here. This is curated content. It’s not written by the property management company, but rather compiled from sources and shared all in one place, which still creates a lot of value and a reason for real estate investors to be on your website.
A point will come where a large portion of your new doors will come from referrals. People don’t usually get into real estate without talking to people, so word gets around.
Welch-Randall, a property management firm based out of Ogden, Utah, attributes 92% of its new doors to referrals. This is the mark of a business with established authority reaping the benefits of the work it put in to create that trust.
A big part of ensuring that you get those referrals is keeping a presence in local business listings. Make sure that people can easily find you, even if they hear of you through word-of-mouth. Stay top-of-mind with partners you’ve worked with, and keep your listings up to date.
This is particularly useful in property management, where most of our work stays within specific local and regional areas.
Becoming an industry-leading property management company is about more than just the number of doors you manage. There is a saying in marketing that perception equals reality. If you want potential clients to perceive your company as an industry leader, you have to give them a reason to believe that you are. That’s the point of a marketing strategy that seeks to establish the company as an authority in the space.
This is the end state of everything discussed above. This is the fruits of your labor. Real estate investors, especially new ones, above all else, are looking for expertise in the real estate field to guide them through the ownership of their assets. By achieving visibility and brand awareness via paid channels and SEO, and following that up with useful content that answers the questions most important to investors, you’re establishing your company as a trustworthy and knowledgeable option for investors. By answering the questions they have, you’re also driving them closer to a decision. And when you’ve provided them the answers, guess which PMC they’re most likely to want to work with.